Here we are the last weekend of September and did we get every summer activity in this year?  NO!  I know it is the old story.  There never seems to be enough time, that is my big complaint in life.   Well, I guess that beats being bored all the time.

Anyway finally got some sleep after my outbreak of side effects.  A little bit of a roller coaster this time around.  Looking forward to two weeks of smoother sailing.  Have company coming and need to make the most of that.

Have to run to my Bible Guys class now but will be back.  We will be working on the 23rd Psalm today, a classic.  Be back.  OK, here I am almost noontime.

The 23rd Psalm is about the sheep and the shepard.  Mankind, us, being the sheep and Christ being the shepard.  It is very well known and easy to find so I won’t go into it.  But the most interesting part of the lesson was a reading that our leader did of a written piece on just how “dumb” sheep can be.  They cannot exist on their own because of all the trouble that they can get into and not get out of without help.  They just need the shepard.

And at some point in this process we were struck by how “dumb” humans can be.  Not that we are like sheep exactly but that we have our own set of ways to get into trouble, our own pitfalls.   Addiction comes to mind just for starters and there are plenty of others.  But the point being that we all need guidance.

Love you, miss you, Felipe.

My Rebecca used that word “futz” this morning.  My mother used to use that word and haven’t heard it for centuries.  It may fit my blog post this morning.  I’ve been with little sleep over the past two nights, steroid side effect, so I may futz myself through this whole day.

futz – waste time, idle or busy oneself aimlessly.

futz around with – deal with (something) in a trifling way; fiddle with.

Yea, that’s what I’m talking about.  I am going to futz with my day today.

William from  Calgary sent some nice pics of a two day hike he did with some students in the Canadian Rockies.   But what was super nice were pics of places were he prayed for me.  How about that?  Love that guy and I hope to meet him one day.

Jim my oldest friend and his wife Gloria are going to be here next week.  Annie my producer/director will be here also.  She has a film in the Tacoma Film Festival.  So we will be visiting.

Raining out now.  The weather is starting to change.  But I have been telling you that but still it is the most significant happening here at this time.

Well, time to futz forward or futz onward.  Love you guys, Felipe.

Still mostly summer here with hints of things to come.  Morning walks have wet grass so wear your boots and afternoon walks you can go with shoes or sandals.

Monday 0900-1000

Tuesday 1600-1700 ( tapas and wine after)

Thursday 0900-1000

Sunday 1600-1700 ( tapas and wine after)

As exceptions to the rule will be traveling Oct 15-19 and Nov 1-6.   Felipe.

Yea, feeling beat up after a hard day at the office yesterday.  It was my seventh round of the hard stuff chemo treatment.  We were shooting for eight but my body rebelled with an allergic reaction.  So, they shut the treatment down and we worked on calming my body down.  It is all a challenge.  So, it is time to regroup with a scan and a new approach.

Balancing all that is the incredible support that I have in the thoughts and prayers of people that I know and some that I’ve never met.  Ultimately this makes everything right.  Ultimately we are in this flow of pilgrims that will take us home.  Just like in Spain in the afternoon after a hot day of walking and our group was mostly brain dead someone would be capable of herding the rest of into shelter.  We are all headed to shelter whether we can see it from here or not.

I just was thinking about Puerto Rico and was on the computer so I Googled one of my old Marine Corp buddies.  Found out that wild child turned out to be a career police officer for the city of Chicago.  Who would have thought?  He passed away at 62 in 2010 according to the obit.

Ok, off to my walk this AM.  Looks pretty nice out and according to the weatherman one of our last days of summer.   Good, let’s get out there and enjoy it, uberperfect, love, Felipe.

Knock, knock, knock, that is what I woke up to this morning at 0620.  It’s dark out, who is knocking at our door?  “Mike hi.”  “Hey we got a deer last evening and here is the liver and heart.  Didn’t know what time you ate breakfast.”  That’s how I woke up this morning.  Abundance comes in strange ways sometimes.

This abundant thing started yesterday.  My Rebecca and I went out to Gravy for her birthday dinner.  OK, just an aside, this is a semi fancy eatery named Gravy where nothing comes with gravy, only on Vashon.  Anyway we had our nice meal, and we were pulling out the card and discovered that an anonymous donor had already paid for our dinner.   Well OK then!

We got home after that and Matt, one of my Marine Corps buddies stopped by to hunt the last light and brought fresh caught King Salmon.  Some were filets and some was chunks smoked.  Well OK then.  This is getting hard to handle, right?

So yes, did have fresh liver for breakfast with Catherine y Dana’s raspberry jam and will prepare the heart for dinner tonight.  Sounds a little primitive perhaps but good eating and super nutritious none the less.  I could make some gravy to have with that tonight, yea that would bring things full circle around here.

I don’t think you can have all this kind of fun in the city really.  Just pickin and a grinnin here in the outback.  Miss you, love you, Felipe.

Early morning here before our walk.  The sky is gray and uninspiring.  Most of the leaves are still green but tints of fall color here and there.  The deer are frantically eating trying to put on a little more fat for the winter.  They appreciate the cougar being gone I think.  What was once a going concern, the corn field sits tired and lonely missing my touch.

We are in transition with summer rapidly disappearing and winter looming on the horizon.  Going from salad days to turnip days,  going from carefree to careful,  going from sun screen to rain jackets.  But it is all part of the natural rhythm that ultimately is comforting; you can count on it.

It is fun thinking of our Caminoheads in Australia and Argentina starting to experience spring.  They did the hard work of winter and now it is their turn to relax and stretch the kinks out.  Angela and her new husband Dave were here recently from Sidney, Australia visiting and walking Phil’s Camino.  And another Caminohead, Cris from Buenos Aires is slated to come in October.  So we keep in touch with our Southern neighbors.

Global R Us so to speak.  Fun to be a stop on the international circuit.  Thank you all for keeping in touch with Caminoheads and our effort here in the NW corner of North America.

Off to walk.  Need my boots this morning.  Miss you, love you, Felipe.

Way back when in 2014 Kelly and I trained to walk the Camino.  This was once it looked to us like the trip would be possible.  Not all the pieces were in place but we proceeded like it was all going to come together.  And in the end we did go and had a grand marvelous life changing experience.  And Kelly took his job seriously about being my walking companion and well handler during all that.

One of the things we would do each day was have a review of things that I needed to remember, practical things to make the day go right.  This was good because sometimes we would get separated and I’d be on my own which sometimes was a little dicey.  But what is important here now is the concept of review.  Kelly helped me because he would prioritize and emphasize.

So, here we are today and I am going to review for us what is the basic idea that is the foundation of this blog.  Because one problem with blogs is that they move along and a newcomer has to put in some effort to get in the flow and understand the ideas, the texture, the movement of the story.  It is great for the author to charge along but it is easy to get ahead of the readers because it is a bore to explain things all the time.  A longtime follower would know and be acquainted with the bloggers style and train of thought and would consider all the explainations a bore.  So there is a balance to strike between catering to the newcomers and the veterans.

So, let me say because I feel the need to explain that this blog rests on the saying that, “When you get to Santiago your Camino actually begins.”  just to make things clear.   Three years now since Kelly and I got back home the blog has basically been exploring this idea.  What does this mean?  What does it mean to me, to us.  So, this is the review.

I have an archery lesson to give in twenty minutes.  I can see this coming up on my Camino.  Always remember that you are a completely unique child of God and today was made for you.  Miss you, love you, Felipe.

Just got in from Bible Guys class.  What a great session.  An old friend of ours is traveling over for four weeks to do four classes on the Psalms.  That’s a total of six hours on that book.  Not that that is a lot of time on that beautiful long work but the purpose isn’t that.  The purpose is to use it as a picture frame to view the New Testament through.  It is a way to enrich the New and to connect the New and Old Testaments.  I appreciate that being brought to us so conveniently.

Then My Rebecca and I have a luncheon date because, drum roll please, it’s our anniversary.  It is our thirty ninth anniversary.  It sounds like a long time but it went by in a flash,  The world has changed a lot in the meantime though.  So we are off to somewhere; I’m letting her pick.  Sunday night we are going to dinner to a little restaurant named Gravy, although they never have anything with gravy on it which is a little weird to me.   So Sunday is her birthday, I forget which year, thirty nine I think.   Anyway way too much partying.

This early evening I am going to slip away to the city to meet with my physical therapist and her church group.  I don’t know if I am showing Phil’s Camino or not.  I had better take a copy along.  I had scheduled this a long time ago and didn’t remember it was our anniversary.

So just a report on the washer, remember the repair the washer project.  Yea, so I am happy to tell you that it is running smoothly, just needs a little more duct tape and it will be perfect.  That was a bear but we got her done.

What else can I tell you about?  Oh, I Know.  Well the big news is that God loves us all and there is nothing we can do about it.  Yea, that’s it.  Uberperfect it is.  Love, Felipe.

Before we get too carried away I still have the washer to fix. But I have a new theory, a new approach to the problem that only seems to develop when one steps away for a time. So that is one corner of my life right now that I am trying to keep contained.

That being said, some more good news rolled in yesterday. This was after the deal about the trip to Lourdes, sort of a dessert. I was FaceTiming with Cris our Caminohead in Buenos Aires yesterday and she will be up here for a visit in late October. She has a business trip to Chicago and will take a few days afterwards to come to Phil’s Camino. That’s the plan anyway. Yea, alperfect.

Wait if we can have alperfect. I see that my spell check likes that now. OK, but if we can have alperfect it is not to much of a jump to “uberperfect”.  Ha!  I like it!  We have to have new words to cover new ideas or visions.

But back to the washer a second. Sorry. I think there is a lesson here and that is you have to pay your dues. There are certain things in life that we want to take for granted like a washer for instance. All we really want is clean shorts, real simple. But when we don’t have clean shorts and it happens to be our job to fix the situation we have to focus closely on the problem no matter how hard that may be. The more we want to take it for granted the harder it is to focus. Because ultimately we have to figure out how something works to fix it and that takes real work, real concentration. We seem to have better things to do than to hunker down the proper amount.

But wait this post is supposed to be about good news and I am really excited about Cris coming.  As far as I know she is the lone Caminohead on that continent and her take on things is good and unique.  It will be super to spend some quality time with her in person.

Gosh we covered the good, the bad and the ugly on this post.  Better leave it at that.  Off to wrestle with the washer.  Uberperfect love, Felipe.

I made a great batch of that winter favorite, oatmeal, just now.  The secret ingredient?  It was My Rebecca saying, “No FaceBook!”  This was my third attempt in as many weeks.  I was off oatmeal for the summer but was trying to get back with the trigger of cool mornings here.  My first two attempts ended in disaster with two of the gnarlist burnt saucepans ever.  You already know the story, right?  I suppose this never happened to you to get all the right ingredients in the pan and turn the gas on high and forget about it.  Geez, sort of the opposite of waste not want not.

So, I am off to a good start to my day with a full tummy.    Now to make sense of the world.  I got two hours of the Vietnam War (Ken Burns) in the evening and then Nonviolence each morning with Richard Rohr’s blog.  Did those guys get together on this?

Have a walk in a few minutes.  Not raining at the moment but the grass is wet.  Time for winter boots at at Phil’s Camino.  I’ll get some time with the rosary in if no one shows up.  That reminded me, September 17 was Hildegard von Bingen feast day and we let it get past us.  Maybe we can get something together.

Ah 8:50 time to jump up and get ready to walk.  See you tomorrow for more fun.  Love, Felipe.